A Beautiful and Relaxing Day

Last Saturday Sophie and I enjoyed an absolutely beautiful and relaxing day down in Dana Point (about an hour and a 1/2 south of here) with our Houston friends, Steve and Karen Retzloff. We met the Retzloffs back in April at Cursillo, and Karen was the moderator of our Cursillo in September that we helped to staff. This wonderful couple helped us afford to fly to Houston twice (for training and then for the actual weekend), let us drive their cars around Houston while we were there, and graciously lent us their daughter's bedroom to stay in on both of our trips. I think we have officially deemed them our "adopted parents" in Texas! :) They were in town for a business convention and so of course we were more than happy to drive down and see them. We walked on the beach, watched (and laughed at) some surfers in a surfing competition (with hardly any waves...it made for a rather entertaining event!) and they took us to a beautiful lunch at the Ritz Carlton where they were staying. It was also "Mr. Steve's" Birthday so it was wonderful getting to celebrate him in person! (we deemed him "Mr. Steve" back in August--he had come to pick us up from the airport and in the message he left on Sophie's phone telling us he was here he said "hi, this is Mr. Retzloff..." We didn't know them very well, so we later asked Karen if Steve really wanted us to call him Mr. Retzloff. When she looked at us like we were crazy we set about teasing him for his formality. His excuse was that he didn't know if we would know who he was if he just said "this is Steve..." So we decided to shorten it to Mr. Steve and had several of our fellow staff members calling him that by the end of our weekend as well!) We definitely drove home praising God for an absolutely GORGEOUS day, beautiful beaches, and wonderful time with friends!